


Too Dark to Find the Door

by showsforsnails



Series: After the Show [2]
Category: Bob Dylan (Musician), Rock Music RPF, The Band (Band 1968)
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Bob is trying to be manipulative but he's bad at it, Confusion, Exhibitionism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Jealousy, Levon Helm/Robbie Robertson - Freeform, Loneliness, M/M, everyone is a mess, feeble attempts to mimic Bob's speech, it started out as porn but ended up like this, it still works
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-25
Updated: 2019-09-25
Packaged: 2020-10-28 00:35:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20769587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/showsforsnails/pseuds/showsforsnails
Summary: Robbie remembers how Levon told him before leaving that he didn't trust anyone from Bob's crowd and didn't want to have anything to do with them. It sounded unfair then, and Robbie would never leave like Levon left, but right now he silently agrees.





	Too Dark to Find the Door

Robbie wakes up in the dark and can’t understand where he is. His neck is stiff and the muscles in his back are tense and painful from sleeping in a chair. 

Right, so he fell asleep in a chair in a hotel room that might not be his. Or it could be his; it's too dark to tell. 

He's about to get up when he finally registers the noises that might have woken him up. There's a bed in the room and someone is putting it to good use, the creaks, sighs and grunts making it obvious that he's not alone. 

Robbie turns his head to look at the movement of the two shapes he can vaguely see against the bedsheets and the wall and freezes. He remembers now that he's in Bob's room, where he fell asleep after playing the guitar with him for hours, too tired to walk to his bed. This must mean that one of these two must be Bob. 

Life in the Hawks means very little privacy. He's used to sleeping in rooms next to people having sex, and having sex while someone is trying to sleep inches away from him, on top of the more innocent stuff like falling asleep in the first bed he’s come across, even if someone (usually Levon) already is there; in fact, he’s used to never being alone, to nothing he does ever being private. Touring with Bob has been exactly the same, or even worse, despite them actually having their own rooms, because the Hawks on their own would never have attracted that much attention from the press and the fans, and they never had as many people travelling with them. But this is Bob, and Robbie feels like an intruder.

He also feels betrayed, and reminding himself that Bob owes him nothing after the strange, hurried sex that must have been only a couple of hours ago doesn't make the ridiculous feeling go away.

He can't get up and leave without attracting attention, so he freezes in his place, closing his eyes, pretending to be asleep, hoping he  _ does _ fall asleep. 

A voice that is definitely Bob's swears, and someone laughs.

“That's right, Bobby,” a voice says and Robbie could swear it was Neuwirth. He fights the urge to open his eyes and check, reminding himself it's too dark anyway.  _ And if it isn't, they might realize I'm awake. _

“If it's that dark,” he thinks, “why can't I get up and leave?” Because, comes the unconvincing answer, it's too dark for him to find the door. And now he wants to laugh because he remembers hearing Bob sing that line. He wonders whether the real reason he's still sitting in this chair, pretending to hear nothing, is that he wants to hear everything. Had this been anyone else, he wouldn’t even have thought of questioning himself this way, but with Bob it feels strange and voyeuristic. 

_ I’m not eavesdropping, _ Robbie thinks,  _ all I did was fall asleep in the wrong place. They, or one of them, decided not to wake me up and kick me out so that I wouldn’t be in their way. _

“Like this,” Neuwirth’s voice says after one of them moans quietly. “Better than what you got from  _ him _ , right?”

Bob is silent.

“Right, Bobby? He may be good with his guitar, he may be exactly what you  _ need _ on this tour, but he can't give you what you  _ want _ . I  _ know _ what you want. ”

“Do you?” Bob's voice is quiet but it makes the hairs on Robbie’s neck stand on end. “You're sure?”

“Yeah…” Neuwirth’s voice is cut off. The bed creaks.

“You think you know it better than me? You think you can get in my bed and tell me what I like?” There is something disconcerting in hearing the menacing words between the sounds of kisses.

“Well, if you can't say it yourself,” says Neuwirth. “Someone has to. And if I can't, no one can.”

“Who says  _ you _ can?”

There's another pause and then they both laugh.

_ They are talking about me and laughing, _ Robbie thinks.  _ They are either sure I won’t wake up and hear them or they don’t care or they  _ want _ me to hear how little I mean. _

Whatever Bob and Neuwirth are doing to each other right now, they've clearly decided it's more important than talking. Robbie bites his lip and tries to think of anything that would take his mind off those creaks, and sighs, and moans, and Bob letting out a string of profanities at some heightened moment. There must be no air left in the room, only smells of smoke, sweat and sex.

He must be really tired, because he almost manages to fall asleep, slipping into a repetitive dream where he’s either confronting or joining them, when Neuwirth starts talking again, his voice too low to understand, and Bob stops him.

“Now get out.”

“What?” 

“Get dressed and get out.”

Robbie expects Neuwirth to start arguing, but he seems to obey without a word. Once again, he thinks about what a strange relationship those two have: Bob so reliant on Neuwirth and yet so obviously in charge, Neuwirth so possessive yet so compliant. 

A bed creaks again. Clothes rustle. Judging by the sounds, a body gets up off the bed, steps approach Robbie and pause.

“What about him?” asks Neuwirth’s voice somewhere close. “You know he's awake. I think he’s been awake for a while now. I think he’s been sitting here quiet as a mouse, listening to every sound we make. Haven’t you, Robbie? Did you like it?” He must be leaning over Robbie, looking at him, and now he's so close Robbie can feel his breath on his face. 

“Leave him.” 

“Fine,” says Neuwirth, and that breath is gone. “I’d be freaked out if I knew he’d be sitting in my room the whole night, watching me sleep, but that’s just me. If you change your mind and want him kicked out, call me.”

More steps. A door opens and closes.

“Robbie?” says Bob after letting Robbie sit in the quiet room several heartbeats, wishing he didn't exist. 

Robbie, his eyes still shut and head bowed to hide his face, stays silent. 

"You're awake," says Bob, "and it's OK." 

"I woke up and I didn't know how to leave quietly," says Robbie, not daring to open his eyes yet. "I thought maybe I'd fall asleep again. I wasn't doing all that on purpose…" 

“Come here,” says Bob, and Robbie, without thinking, gets out of his chair and steps closer to the bed before he stops and asks: “Why?”

“Because if you sleep in that chair any longer, you’ll be half-dead by morning, and this bed is big enough.”

“I could just go to my room,” says Robbie, thinking that this is what he should have done hours ago, but he could swear Bob’s eyes glint in the dark. 

“Imagine Bobby finding out you spent the night here.”

"No," says Robbie quickly, "he hates me enough already. I'd never hear the end of it." 

"He'll get over it," Bob says cheerfully. “I don't think he cares enough to hate you. I don't think anyone here hates you.”

“Nice," says Robbie. "Just what I needed to hear. Anyway, I can tell when I’m not liked. I've had years of practice. Hearing people talk behind my back, call me names and make fun of me is a good hint, don’t you think? Sometimes they don't even have to say anything, and it's just as obvious."

Bob is silent. He might have nodded his head wordlessly, but it’s too dark to be sure. 

"I can’t figure you out though," says Robbie. "I thought you wanted me to be here and now you’re doing this.”

"Doing what?" 

"Making it as hard as possible not to get up and leave," says Robbie, and doesn't really mean it, but what else can he say?

The small dark shape that is Bob moves slightly, it seems to look away, then back at Robbie, then away again. Then Bob reaches out, and it looks like he's reaching for Robbie, but it's only to turn on a small lamp on the bedside table. In its light he looks even paler and thinner than usual, a rumpled bed sheet covering his hips. He looks like he hasn’t slept for months, and he probably hasn’t, with everything he's been through and everything he's putting himself through.

“Everyone wants to be indispensable,” he says, looking past Robbie, slurring the last word so hard Robbie can guess it only through experience of having listened to Bob for so long. “Everyone wants to be that one guy that I’d fall apart without, and lose, and have to go home. No-one wants anyone else to take that place. Everyone wants me to need them more than anyone else.”

He pauses. “Some think they’ve got there, and now they have to defend against everybody else.”

“I…” manages Robbie.  _ I just want to play the guitar for you and learn from you, _ he wants to say,  _ I don’t for a moment believe you couldn’t do without me, because you can do anything, _ but he thinks that if he tried to say it all the words would sound wrong.

Bob looks down at his hands.

“You, I really do need. I couldn’t manage without you onstage. You’re the best guitar player I’ve ever had, not just ‘cause you’re good, but I don’t even need to explain anything to you when we’re up there. You get it without words.” Bob pauses. “You know, travelin', organizin' stuff, talkin' to people for me… some are better at this than the rest but I could always find someone to do it. If you left, I don’t know where I’d be on this tour.”

Robbie sits down on the edge of the bed. He can think of nothing to say. He feels too tired. He’d really love to lie down and fall asleep instead of trying to make sense of the mess he’s been plunged into. At the same time, Bob's words make him light-headed. No matter how good he knows he is, he will never get used to Bob praising him. 

Bob rubs his eyes.

“But yes,” he says with an awkward laugh, “I am using you to get to Bobby, and he does hate how much I need you. All of them do. And you don't deserve it.”

Robbie remembers how Levon told him before leaving that he didn't trust anyone from Bob's crowd and didn't want to have anything to do with them. It sounded unfair then, and Robbie would never leave like Levon left, but right now he silently agrees.

“I don't want to play these games,” he says and hates himself for the way it sounds. “I just want to play the guitar for you. Nothing else.”

“Good,” says Bob. “That’s why I want you.”

Suddenly he reaches out and touches Robbie’s cheek with his cold hand, one of his scarily long fingernails very gently brushing over Robbie’s skin.

“Don’t worry about them. They won’t touch you while you’re with me, no matter how much they hate you.”

Robbie covers Bob's hand with his own.

“I'm already with you,” he says, “and look at…” 

“Tonight?” says Bob. “That won't happen again.”

“How do you know that?” 

“Because it was my idea,” says Bob and has the decency to look uncomfortable. “I wanted you to stay, so I didn't wake you up, and I didn't let Bobby stay, because I wanted to have the rest of the night to talk to you.”

“But this was humiliating!”

Bob blinks. “Not to you. I mean, he's gone and you're here. And I really thought you wouldn't wake up.”

Robbie stares.

“I'm not leaving,” he says, “unless you kick me out yourself, and I might not leave even then, but all of you are very weird. And don't ever do that again. Please.”

Bob nods. “But will you stay tonight?” he says.

Robbie swallows. “Yes,” he says. 

Bob smiles shyly and then puts his hand on Robbie’s arm. 

“I messed up,” he says. “I keep saying all sorts of things tonight, and I don't know if I thought you wouldn't wake up or I wanted you to wake up and see, and, I don't know, do something. But you don't have to do anything you don't want to.”

“Was a single word of what you said tonight true?” Robbie asks. 

“Some of them.” Bob pauses, looks down at his hands, fidgets. “Look,” he says, looking up again, “I need you to play for me, you want to do it, we survive those crowds every night, what's a little or a lot of their jealousy to you, when that's the only thing they can do? None of them can do what you can, or what we can when we play together. Bobby can talk as much shit as he likes, but that’ll change nothing, and you don't need to listen to him. Just stay by my side.”

“It already felt like I was in the middle of a war,” says Robbie, trying to sound like he’s joking, “now I feel like you're trying to put me on a leash and keep me separated from everyone else.” 

Bob puts his head to the side, grins and says nothing.

Robbie swallows. Some sober part of him points out that Bob is trying to cut him off from the rest of the world, keep him only to himself, making him even more lonely, but this part isn't going to win, at least not now. Bob really needs him; words of praise from him make Robbie’s head spin; hearing Bob admit he needs Robbie is too much. What's the rest of the world to him when there's Bob? Anyway, Levon is gone and who knows if they’re going to meet again, and the rest of the band seem happy enough without him (that’s not true, he tells himself immediately, they need him just as much as he needs them, don’t they? But this is how it feels). Bob is the most important person in his world right now, and this person needs him.

He thinks about the way they seem to understand each other wordlessly on stage, somehow finding clarity in the mess and the noise (right now, Bob seems too confused and tired not to be confusing), the strange dance Bob pulls him into sometimes, that feeling of sharing the same reality that exists only for them. Right now, he's not sure if there is any reality to anything at all. 

Robbie isn't quite sure what Bob expects him to do, but he starts unbuttoning his shirt. While Bob lies back and watches him silently, Robbie gets out of his shirt and pants, folds them and leaves them on a chair.

“Shouldn’t sleep in them,” he explains unnecessarily. 

Bob nods and yawns. 

The whole situation is extremely unerotic, especially compared to those uninvited memories of concerts even more than the quick, unexpected sex they had between playing the guitar earlier this night. Bob looks so small, pale and tired that what Robbie feels acutely for him right now is a mixture of admiration and protectiveness.

Still, Robbie can't stop himself and blurts out a question. 

“When you said I didn't have to do anything I didn't want to, did you mean just music or anything else?” 

“Everything. Obviously, you're here as my guitarist, so you're paid to go on that stage every night.” Bob pauses for a long time, until Robbie is certain he's not going to hear anything else, then starts speaking again, slurring his words harder than ever, pulling the sheet tighter around himself, as if he’s trying to create a cocoon to hide in. “No, let's just call it what it is. If you're askin' if you have to fuck me, then no, no, you don't. I can take care of myself and you don't have to do anything you don't want.”

“What if I do want it?” 

Bob gives him a long silent look, until Robbie sits down on the bed again, leans forward and kisses him, mainly just to see what happens. Bob's lips move against his, and Robbie feels Bob's touch on the side of his face. Bob's hands are still very cold. 

"Tomorrow,” says Bob, lying back. “Please. We can talk tomorrow about everything, and this too.”

Robbie nods, a little relieved.


End file.
